Williams was born[2] to a Jewish family.[3] His father, Haskell Heimlich, legally changed the spelling of the family name to "Heimlick", unlike Williams's father's cousin,[4] Dr. Henry Heimlich, namesake of the Heimlich maneuver for treating choking victims.[2] Williams attended Burbank High School, where he was captain of the track team and acted in multiple school productions.[citation needed]
In 1972, Williams portrayed Potsie Weber in a segment of the comedy-anthology series Love, American Style titled "Love and the Happy Days", which also introduced Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard), Richie's mother Marion (Marion Ross), and other characters who were spun off into the television series Happy Days. (Only Williams, Howard, and Ross reprised their roles).[5][6] The new series' first season, during which Williams received second billing after Howard, was centered mainly on Richie and Potsie. Eventually, as breakout character Arthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli (Henry Winkler) and Richie's mother, father, and sister became more popular, Potsie was joined by Ralph Malph (Don Most, who was merely a side character in season one), and Potsie and Ralph became inseparable.
Unlike Howard and Most, Williams was one of the few to remain through the entire run of the series, although his appearances became less frequent in later seasons. In some episodes, Richie, Potsie, and Ralph formed a band combo that performed at Arnold's Drive-In and other places. As Potsie, Williams actually sang lead vocals for the group. Williams's first wife, Lorrie Mahaffey, portrayed Potsie's girlfriend, Jennifer, in later seasons.
In 1977, during his run on "Happy Days" Williams recorded and released a single, "Deeply" which peaked at #93 on the Hot 100.[7]
Despite his success as a director and producer, Williams has occasionally returned to his work on Happy Days in retrospective ways. He played himself in a 1996 Happy Days-themed Boy Meets World episode (which also featured former castmates Tom Bosley and Pat Morita).[10] While directing a 2003 episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch titled "Sabrina in Wonderland", he appeared as Potsie in a fantasy sequence.[citation needed] He also joined his fellow Happy Days cast members for two reunion specials: The Happy Days Reunion Special (1992) and Happy Days: 30th Anniversary Reunion (2005).
Williams initially objected to footage of Potsie appearing in Weezer's 1994 music video Buddy Holly, which was set in Arnold's Drive-In from Happy Days, but he later relented.[11]
Williams is also a businessman. In 1987, he and fellow Happy Days cast member Al Molinaro opened a chain of diners called Big Al's; however the business lasted only a short time.[12] He founded Starmaker Products, a cosmetics company, and was a featured speaker at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's National Trademark Expo in April 2008, where he discussed the importance of registered trademarks for small businesses and signed autographs for Happy Days fans. Williams is the author of Singing to a Bulldog: From Happy Days to Hollywood Director, and the Unlikely Mentor Who Got Me There.[13]
As of July 2023, Williams and his wife, memoirist Sharon MaHarry, who had married in May, were collaborating on a one woman stage play based on her book, Crazy Mama: A Memoir of Love and Madness, which depicts a character growing up with a mother who has struggled with mental illness, which won the 2014 Southwest Writers Competition and Santa Barbara Writers Conference Fiction Award.[14]
Politics
On July 7, 2022, Williams announced that he would be running for mayor of Ojai, California.[15] He lost to incumbent mayor Betsey Stix by 42 votes, with Williams receiving 1,781 votes to Stix’s 1,823.[16]
Legal issues
On April 19, 2011, Williams and four of his Happy Days co-stars, Erin Moran, Don Most, Marion Ross, and the estate of Tom Bosley, who died in 2010, filed a $10 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS, which owns the show, claiming they had not been paid for merchandising revenues owed under their contracts. The cast members claimed they had not received revenues from show-related items, including comic books, T-shirts, scrapbooks, trading cards, games, lunch boxes, dolls, toy cars, magnets, greeting cards, and DVDs, where their images appeared on the box covers. Under their contracts, they were supposed to be paid 5% from the net proceeds of merchandising if their sole images were used, and half that amount if they were in a group. CBS said it owed the actors $8,500 and $9,000 each, most of it from slot machine revenues, but the group said they were owed millions. The lawsuit was initiated after Ross was informed by a friend playing slots at a casino of a Happy Days machine on which players win the jackpot when five Marion Rosses are rolled.[17]
In October 2011, a judge rejected the group's fraud claim.[18] On June 5, 2012, a judge denied a motion filed by CBS to have the case thrown out, which meant it would go to trial on July 17 if the parties did not reach a settlement by then.[19] In July 2012, the actors settled their lawsuit with CBS. Each received a payment of $65,000 and a promise by CBS to continue honoring the terms of their contracts. Williams said, "I'm very satisfied with the settlement. And that's all I can say."[20][21]
Personal life
Williams had been married to Jackie Gerkin. He filed for divorce in 2019, but later filed a motion to have that previous filing dismissed in October of that year. He then filed again in 2020.[14]
Around 2010, Williams met memoirist and real estate broker Sharon MaHarry, when she sold him his house in Ojai, California. Williams also helped her regain the ability to walk as she recovered from a serious back injury, and as she mourned the loss of her husband of 35 years to cancer. They subsequently began a relationship, which Williams characterized by saying, "the first few months of the relationship was healing." MaHarry commented that the relationship "first healed a body then a heart." They eventually moved into a home in Ojai, California. On May 6, 2023, the couple married in their backyard in what they called a "very untraditional" ceremony. Williams' Happy Days co-star Donny Most served as best man. Commenting on getting married at age 73, Williams said, "At this age, to be able to find that kind of full connection for the first time, and what that means — it's a miracle. I would trade my stardom, notoriety, all that bologna for Sharon in a minute. There's no age limit on being loved. There's no age limit on living life fully."[14][22]
^ abRose, David (2010). "Mentally I'm a Size Eight". Sexually, I'm More of a Switzerland: More Personal Ads from the London Review of Books. Simon and Schuster. p. 22. ISBN978-1-4391-3149-7. Retrieved August 3, 2011.
